Dear A. Bouazza,

 

I read Cortázar's "Hopscotch" a long time ago and I prefer this author's short-stories to his novels. That's why I'm unfamiliar with the one you mention.  Thank you for the information:  it will be interesting to return to our "Blow Up" writer. 

Actually, what interested me more after checking publication dates was the internet text then posted to the List. It offers a description of other creators, beside Cortázar, who may have used the principle of the "hopscotch game" ( such as movie directors Jacques Tati and Hitchcock -  and Nabokov, perhaps?) and it also gives bits of information about the game as played in old times. 

 

In Portuguese we name it "Jogo de Amarelinha" and this designation comes closer to the name for the stone used in it (Marelle in French, the English game Merels purportedly linked to the Latin "mara" ). "Mara", as I learned then ... "were used to describe heaps of stones. Such were also used as counters at crossroads to establish points of "silent trade," governed by the gods Cardea, Janus/Dianus, or Hermes (Mercury), whose regulative roles were behind the relations among the market and portals, doors, and festivals celebrating the pivots of the annual year."  The "Buchman" ( a pile of books, "Buch/book",  at Sybil's door), connected to the "Steinman" ( stone-man)  came to my mind while reading about "mara", although I don't think these "markers" were introduced by VN having the  "mara" in mind, nor in the sense Cortázar seemed to employ them in his novel. There are other "shifters" in VN.

 

I was more interested in another information the text  had to offer to amateurs like me:  Bentham's "Panopticon" and its use of central circular spaces and shutters to allow "eavesdropping" (or, as Kinbote writes, "cavesdrop" in Cedarn, as if he were kept a prisoner like Charles II ) the inmates of a prison or hospital.  I had always wondered why the geography at Wordsmith's campus and K's "castle" or Shade's home never seemed to fit into a regular "map" with its special bends or when, as in Shade, "some quirk in space/ Has caused a fold or furrow to displace/ The fragile vista...",  creating a kind of "mental geography".
The diagram of Bentham's panopticon led me to imagine that "Pale Fire" could be structured like some labyrinthine "spying" device  while the characters in it, despite all their perspectives, could also be spied upon by the reader when placed in their "turret". But then, of course, Bentham would have been mentioned somewhere by VN. Besides, the vision provided in "PF", at least for Kinbote, is inverted ( I understand that in Bentham's project the inmates could be viewed singularly and collectively by hidden invisible guards, as it happens now because of  videocameras and monitors). So, I'm still waiting for Tom Rymour and his map of Zembla and Wordsmith's campus.

 

Despite the weight of uncritically "over-reading" Pale Fire, there is still something else I noticed today.

Jonathan Swift  (1667-1745)  and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) are present in "Pale Fire" in more ways than by simple direct references.  Their initials are similar to John Shade's: JS and SJ.

One more coincidence?